The only real data you have is work-related. They may be better than you at specific things. But these are also the things you can improve on if you really wanted to.
Here’s the honest truth: based on some details you know about them, you may think: I know this person. Well, fuck off with that because, in reality, you don’t. You just assume things, and you have to because you are thinking about it so much.
You have no real data on where they come from, what their real-life situation is, what their opportunities were, and how they have managed to make it so far—all of these could easily be far better than you or far worse.
Before dragging yourself down or someone else down, always remind yourself they haven’t lived a day in your shoes, and you haven’t in theirs. This is happening only because you are triggered from knowing they are better than you in some particular aspect. And it fucks with you because your self-worth comes from the approval of others—that’s the source of your problem, not this person.
You know what, let’s talk about the source of your problem as well.
DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHERS THINK ABOUT YOU?
Let’s think about this: You care so much about what others think about you because you are working under the assumption that people care about you just as much as you do. Well, my friend, welcome to reality—they don’t. You are competing with people who are more personable, have better social skills, are more attractive, because you are scared they are going to be better liked by others than you. You are ruining your mood over this.
Here’s the truth: nobody cares. Nobody cares unless they have a personal motive to care. You have rarely looked at how things are from the point of view of others. If you did, you’d realise that the people you want to impress can barely afford to think about you.
It is just like how you don’t have a moment to spare for those who want to be liked by you. You haven’t even thought of that, have you? There are people who want to be liked by me? There always are, but you rarely pay attention to them because their approval means shit to your self-worth, as opposed to the approval of those who are awesome in your eyes. The same applies to them; at the end of the day, they don’t give a shit about you.
People are most interested in their own lives. That does not mean they don’t notice people around them. Well, they are interested in people around them because a lot of entertainment comes from people. It’s called gossip. And we are social animals. But time and time again, never forget, people are most interested in their own shit. They are busy with their own shit. And they are constantly thinking about their own shit. You place very, very, very low in the list of important things to them, unless you are their partner—personally or professionally—or they have a strong personal motive.
However, important and powerful people do have the power of offering opportunities, which must be something you are interested in because of which you want to impress them. Here’s a simple rule: fuck whatever gossip goes around in their mind regarding you. Gossip gets discarded and replaced every day. Lasting impressions are formed by things they cannot ignore. So, impress with abilities, not appearance. Abilities cannot be ignored; if one person happens to do so, there are always going to be other takers.
You have to understand, people may not care about you, but they do make observations. And their approval is nothing more than one of those many observations. They are not just sitting and thinking about you, but that observation does sit at the back of their head, with chances of making a connection with an opportunity. And opportunities as a reward are much better than appreciation.
Appreciation gives you momentary pleasure. Opportunities get you somewhere in life. So apply common sense and tell me, which is better? Doing anything to grab pointless attention or something that benefits you in life?
Try to understand this: the day you can look at a bunch of people all competing with one another to be better in the eyes of someone, and choose to not be a part of that game, is the day you win in the mental battle of life. Look at that figure that you want to impress and see a person in them, nothing but a person just like other people you know. If they have the power to give you opportunities, then focus on what makes one capable to get that opportunity. Screw serving that person.
But if you focus majorly on getting appreciation and approval from them, then you are going to focus on who else they appreciate, and then probably compete with them. You will risk ruining your mood on days you performed well but didn’t receive their appreciation, and be more inclined to become their followers, their puppets and pawns to their schemes.
You are accumulating self-worth from the appreciation of others. That is the root of your problem. Not people who are better than you.
DO YOU RELY ON PEOPLE FOR MOTIVATION?
This is an example of a situation in which you meet awesome people, and are motivated because you realise that you lack self-worth.
Think of the time you attended an event, seminar or conference related to your work or studies. There you met and talked to people who are experts in the field, who have superior skills and more success than you. It gave you immense exposure. While you were there, you felt and thought:
I am going to be great in this too.
Why wasn’t I working hard all this while? If I were, I would have been impressive too.
Upon returning, you start planning as you experience a surge of inspiration growing in you, and you think about the things you have been wasting your time on. You start cursing, criticising and blaming them. You decide in the moment that you are going to be making changes now and become serious towards work.
And in about ten days or so, you go back to doing what you were doing previously. The new-found motivation is gone. Do you know why that is?
Well, at that event, three things happened:
In that room, you saw versions of what you can become in terms of success and skills.
Your self-worth took a severe beating as you weren’t the impressive somebody people wanted to talk to or talk about. You were an unknown who talked to impressive somebodies.
You met with several people who are competent and awesome in everybody’s eyes in that room. Therefore, naturally, you wanted to be approved and accepted by them. One day they’re gonna know.
Hence, the motivation was created by a) wanting success for yourself b) wanting success so you can show to others that you are worthy and c) wanting approval and acceptance of the successful people you met.
Two-thirds of your fucking motivation came from the outside, only one-third from inside. When these others left your mind in ten days or so, so did two-thirds of your motivation, and you went back to doing the same things you used to before.
And then you are sitting with your phone in your hand, wondering why you are not motivated anymore.
As a result, you start glorifying these events in your mind, romanticising the people you met as though they were perfect beings, and blaming more strongly the people in your life as if they have tied your hands. It’s because of them I don’t work hard.
Your problem is your motivation comes from the outside, and you have labelled outsiders as the ideal source for your motivation. If you want to be crazily motivated to do anything, a hundred per cent of the reasons to do that thing will have to come from the inside. Words like ‘others’ and ‘them’ will have to be replaced by ‘myself’. It should not be I wanna show them, but I wanna show myself; not I want to be great so they will be impressed, but I want to be great so I can be satisfied with myself. You have to keep this word in mind: myself. That’s who you are; that’s the one who gets affected; and that’s the one whose life it is.
If you are relying on others, you are indirectly controlled by others. And others don’t give a shit about you.
Now, how do we achieve this? Buckle up, my friend, we’re gonna take the word ‘myself’ up a few notches and create a new foundational principle: You are a nation. That’s how you will have to start seeing yourself from now on. You are a
nation in yourself, and I am going to prove it to you.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
YOU ARE A NATION
BECOMING INDEPENDENT
Before we move on to the nation part, let’s make sure we know what our objective is. It is the simple question: how do you extract self-worth, approval, acceptance from your ‘self’?
To do this, there needs to be a ‘self’ first. This means you will have to get to know your self. When you are getting to know your self, you will find out that you have specific wants, desires and tendencies in you. Out of those, you’re gonna find out that there are certain things in you which are the enemy. It could be certain desires, some urges in you, or some tendencies which cause self-harm. Basically, they are set out to ruin whatever you wanna build.
When you find out all these things, you realise you need to bottle them the fuck up. You need to control this shit. Therefore, you create self-control. Sounds awesome, right? It is. Self-control creates rules, establishes some morality according to which your actions and choices are going to be regulated from now on. This means you are becoming your own person, as you are taking control of yourself. You have rules now. You have moral grounds which you don’t breach.
Now, think about what just happened. The moment you say you have rules and moral codes, you are kinda becoming your own authority. This basically means: for the first time in your life, your self is in charge of you. And when you are able to pull this off for some time, when you are making decisions in your life taking into account what the rules and moral codes are, you experience self-respect. Dayum, this shit is coming together. Self-respect in turn makes you feel that life right now is all right. It makes you feel proud of yourself for making decisions that you want to make. Lastly, self-respect assures you that the ‘self’ as the current authority is the best for you.
And that, my friend, is the entire game—you being in full control of your actions and decisions. Now, stay with me. What do you think happens when you don’t have self-control? Those very tendencies, desires, and urges that are the enemy easily take over you and become the authority. It could be greed, lust, anything. And we see this happen all around us. For example: porn addiction, or some sexual practice that can damage your healthy relationship, or a power-trip that doesn’t care about consequences. These are common examples of desires and tendencies that were supposed to be spanked by self-control and kept in check. And that is why self-control is paramount for the self to remain the authority of you. Without it, these fucking enemies can take over and destroy your mental peace.
But it’s not only self-control, self-respect is equally important. While self-control takes care of inner demons, self-respect takes care of enemies outside.
Without self-respect, you leave yourself open for people to take over and become your authority. You don’t want examples for this, you have seen this shit happen all around you: people doing anything to make someone happy, disregarding their self, their own wants, plans, everything. And not just for love, this happens all over the world for approval, acceptance and self-worth. Yikes. So, self-respect ensures nobody fucks with your authority over your own mind, feelings and wants.
BECOMING A NATION
This is how you need to start seeing yourself from now on:
You are a nation, not just a person.
Other people are other nations.
Your parents, siblings and those you love are neighbouring nations. If you have a good relationship with them, it’s great; if not, you both suffer.
Your ‘self’ is the president of the nation.
Your moral code and rules become your constitution. These rules come from knowing what causes harm to the nation. And the moral code ensures what lines you will never cross.
Self-control is the security force that enforces the rules and moral codes in the constitution.
Self-respect is the happiness index of your nation. This is felt when self-control does its job well.
The desire, urges or tendencies in you that cause harm are the terrorists.
Your ego is the opposition party. It wants you to be the best, but it doesn’t know what ‘best’ is, except that it is a word that makes you feel great. And because of this, the self must govern the ego and work together on certain projects.
Self-satisfaction is enjoying the prosperity from the results.
Therefore, the foreign policy should be never to give anyone else the authority of your nation. Whether it is desires or people; whether it is for love, approval and self-worth or pleasures; your self should be the authority.
BECOMING DIPLOMATIC
Your foreign policy is as strong as your diplomacy. You’re going to meet a lot of people in life. You can’t just allow anybody to start fucking with your feelings, which happens a lot. It happens in the name of wanting someone’s approval, in the name of being liked by colleagues, and in the name of love.
Why does it happen? The answer is because of that really dumb thing called ego. Your ego cares too much about how people see you, what people think of you, and how to control those two. Well, the honest truth is—you can’t, you can’t control how people see you and what they think of you. You can watch a thousand videos on how to make people like you, even then you will find some who won’t for no specific reasons. And their talking smack behind your back will bother you a lot. The same goes for rejections. People will reject you, and your brain will go: How dare you reject the awesome creation that is me!
People are gonna do whatever the fuck they want. You get to control what you do and how you think—that’s your only privilege. So, for your own benefit, in order to shut your ego down, you will have to learn to let go. The more you master it, the less you’re going to give a fuck about what people think of you.
Letting go can be boiled down to two simple things:
You can’t please everyone.
You can’t control anyone.
Simple enough, right? If you can practise these simple enough sayings in real life, your ego will be in check. You really can’t waste your time and go around blaming people for being assholes, because people are none of your business. You have to understand what your ego is doing.
Your ego creates a much higher opinion of yourself than what is true in reality. When you think very highly of yourself, you may have trouble seeing the simple truth. That happens because your head is very far up your ass.
The ego gives you two simple formulas: I can and They can’t.
Here’s an example of I can. Let’s take people who think they are the hottest shit on the planet; therefore, they believe, I can charm and control any person I want.
The truth is, soon enough, some person is going to walk into your life and rip apart your plans and strategies to pieces. It will happen because of probability.
And when it happens, your ego is going to be shattered, which might make you obsess over this person. You will do so because your ego doesn’t only teach you I can, but also: They can’t.
So, you will see a person unable to be controlled by you, and think: How dare they do this? How dare they break the pattern of everybody liking me? They can’t do this.
To this, the ego will respond again with more overconfidence—I can still get them to like me. I will change myself. I will try a new strategy.
And from then on begins a continuous cycle of I can control them and They can’t do that, in short, I can and They can’t.
God knows how many people have destroyed several years of their lives being stuck in this bullshit; how many people have entered terrible relationships because of this; how many people are doing anything to please someone at the workplace or school. If you too are stuck in this cycle, let them go. It’s your stupid ego that has gotten you into this. You are fine.
This cycle prevents you from seeing the reality that is right in front of you. If you cared to look at the reality, the facts would be laid out pretty neatly. But your dumb ego keeps pushing you to focus on how this makes you feel instead of what this me
ans. This prolongs the suffering and makes you keep going back to them or keep longing for their approval.
The truth is, you can’t and they can—and this is where we started. You can’t please everybody. You can’t control anybody. What you do control is yourself, so why not put all of your focus there? You are a nation, after all.
YOUR EGO IS A DUMB BELIEVER
People, and that includes you, are most interested in themselves. And it is that self-interest which is making you want to be interesting and important in the eyes of people too.
People come and go. How many of them are you going to keep pleasing? And for how long is this strategy going to last? Finally, if they are most interested in themselves, what would make them give a shit about you as much as they give a shit about themselves? You’re just a person they know.
Whenever you feel bad or hurt because somebody is acting a little strange, scream that in your mind if you have to: it is your stupid ego getting hurt. You, my friend, are fine. Your reality is exactly how it was. And in reality, it doesn’t fucking matter. You can’t control people, and you shouldn’t have to think about it too. You wanna feel better? Apply the concept of specialness that we talked about in the second chapter. You earn your self-worth. People shouldn’t be giving it to you in the first place. You allowed it, so stop it now. You have to become your own complete person, a complete nation in yourself that can take care of itself and is unaffected by other people’s bullshit.
So, the question becomes: how do you free yourself? And from whom specifically do you have to free yourself? This, again, will be a journey. We will have to clear a lot of concepts that you have taken for granted, such as heroes, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and about people. Without clarity, change is plagued by confusion. And when you are confused, any person can easily become your authority and make you their follower. All they have to do is convince you that they know more, hence they should direct you. This is a journey on which it will become clear to you that you are capable of directing yourself.
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